1. Field of the Invention
The field of the present invention is mounting systems for flat panel displays, in particular systems adapted for mounting flat panel displays to walls, desks, under cabinets, and other supporting structures.
2. Background
Many different types of systems exist for mounting flat panel displays to various structures, including racks, desktops, under cabinets, walls, poles, or other suitably supportive structures. One problem that frequently arises with such systems occurs during installation of a system mounted on a vertical surface. For an arm that is intended to articulate horizontally, a non-level installation, resulting in a non-level plane of articulation, causes undesirable vertical drift in the display position when the arm is articulated between opposite extremes. Non-level articulation may also cause unwanted movement of the display due to gravity when there is minimal resistance in the pivoting joints of the articulating arm. Further, non-level articulation may serve to add gravity-related stresses the articulating arm was not designed to bear, thus potentially shortening the overall life span of the system. For an arm that is intended to articulate vertically, deviance from the vertical causes undesirable horizontal drift in the display position when the arm is articulated between opposite extremes.
A second problem with many available systems is that they lack the versatility to be used for vertical and horizontal articulating applications without significant configuration changes. For example, some vertical articulating arms include tensioning springs to offset the force of gravity. The tensioning springs are attached between the mounting base structure and the articulating arm, and the mounting base structure is generally affixable to horizontal or vertical surfaces. The attachment points of the tensioning springs are positioned to provide the force necessary to offset gravity given the relative orientation between the base structure and the articulating arm when the system is affixed to either a horizontal or vertical surface. The attachment points, however, are generally not the same for both articulation orientations. Therefore, once most systems are installed, they can not be transformed from vertical articulation to horizontal articulation, or vice versa, without uninstalling, reconfiguring, and reinstalling the system.
Moreover, systems designed for horizontal articulation often include no mechanism capable of offsetting the force of gravity if installed to provide vertical articulation. Thus such systems are rendered useless for applications requiring vertical articulation, as they could not support the display at any but the lowest elevation.